gjrk
Looking northwest through the missing portion of the circle.
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The roughly shaped axial stone, higher than its immediate neighbours.
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The easternmost remaining stone, with the two portals leading into the background.
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The inside of the portals, taken while sheltering from the strong sun behind the axial stone.
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Three fields in from the really rather good farm park. Great selection of ride-ons for kids.
According to Frances Lynch (Prehistoric Anglesey 1970, 167):
“More is known about the burials close to the large stones at Henblas, Llangristiolus, but a good deal of confusion remains. The stones in question, which are huge glacial erratics, were long considered to be an artificial structure, some monstrous megalithic tomb, and have naturally attracted a good deal of legend and speculation. It seems clear that there were originally other stones,” (see Rhiannon below) “probably more erratics, in the vicinity, and that in removing these an urn containing burnt bones and a ring of blue glass were found. Even though the stones are a natural feature, this burial need not be doubted for they are a very remarkable phenomenon which must have attracted the attention and admiration of a people used to setting up meini hirion and other large stone monuments”
by Sarah Stack (Irish Examiner 11 August 2007)
‘Bronze age Irish men were as fond of their beer as their 21st century counterparts, it was claimed yesterday.
Two Galway archaeologists have put forward a theory that one of the most common ancient monuments around Ireland may have been used for brewing ale.
They believe fulacht fiadh -horseshoe shaped, grass-covered mounds which were conventionally thought of as ancient cooking spots- could have been the country’s earliest breweries.
To prove their belief that an extensive brewing tradition existed in Ireland as far back as 2500BC, Billy Quinn and Declan Moore recreated the process. After just three hours of hard work, and three days of waiting for their brew to ferment, the men enjoyed a pint of the fruits of their labour.
Three hundred litres of water was transformed into a “very palatable” 110 litres of frothy ale.
“It tasted really good,” said Mr Quinn.
“We were very surprised. Even a professional brewer we had working with us compared it favourably to his own. It tasted like a traditional ale, but was sweeter because there were no hops in it.”
Mr Quinn said it was while nursing a hangover one morning, and discussing the natural predisposition of men to seek means to alter their minds, that he came to the startling conclusion that fulacht fiadh could have been the country’s earliest breweries.
The two set out to investigate their theory in a journey which took them across Europe in search of further evidence.
On their return they used an old wooden trough filled with water and added heated stones. After achieving an optimum temperature of 60C to 70C they began to add milled barley, and about 45 minutes later simply bailed the final product into fermentation vessels. They added natural wild flavourings and yeast after cooling the vessels in a bath of cold water for several hours.
Tomorrow they plan to start work on a fourth batch they hope will taste as good as their first.
The archaeologists, who reveal their experiment in full in next month’s Archaeology Ireland, point out that while their theory is based on circumstantial and experimental evidence, they believe that although fulacht fiadh were probably multifunctional, a primary use was for brewing beer.
The axial stone rising behind the beautiful quartz boulder and some jaded nettles.
Image credit: gjrk
In the picture I posted above I show the stones as viewed from a distance of about 45 feet.
According to Burl (Guide to the Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany 1995, 2005), quoting the Reverend Henry Rowlands, this site contained a circle of ‘eight or nine great pillar-stones... about twelve or fourteen yards diameter’.
Is it possible to imagine a stone just in front of my position and an arc of maybe three or four megaliths continuing on either side to meet at the pair opposite?
In which I drink my fill of quartz and my thirst is sated.
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Looking towards the stones from a distance of about 45 feet.
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The western chamber. Inside the Tent of the Presence.
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Looking down the field towards Snowdonia. Credit to postman for a more awesome view.
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Looking roughly northwest at a veritable cake of quartz.
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The western chamber with light spilling in from the false entrance.
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I’ve not got a lot to add here, given the fame of this site and its comprehensive coverage in all sorts of guide books. A great little volume written by the O’Kellys is available from the proud and committed landowner.
Aubrey Burl in his big ‘Stone Circles of...’ book remarks that the monument’s relationships lie with the Wicklow circles and not with the Scottish recumbent and Munster axial stone varieties. I’m not so sure that a connection to the ASCs should be written off completely. Two northeastern portals look along a main axis, with a winter sunset declination, to two stones at the southwest which, because they sit together, give the same shape as one more broad than high. A supplied v-notch sits in the middle of these ‘axial stones’, an effect also offered by natural valleys in the sightlines of the Winter Solstice circles of Drombeg and Lettergorman South. Maybe in 1000 years an idea could mutate and fuse with other influences and appear some distance to the South?
Looking through the portals along the axis to Burl’s ‘gunsight’. The shapes and relative positions of these two pairs of stones mimic each other, the southernmost one of each coming in at an angle to its more vertical partner. It’s tempting to imagine a nod here towards the arcing dip of a setting sun, and an observation or celebration both inside and outside the great circle.
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Cloghavilla with the Great Stone Circle to the northwest.
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Looking east over the double walling of the south face of the tomb.
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The fallen capstone at the entrance of the tomb helps to form an interesting megalithic chest.
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The split in the northern portal leading across to the eastern curve of the perimeter.
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The massive portals at the northeast of the circle.
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Looking southwest across the circle with the russet rear of Rannnach Croim Dubh filling the right hand side of the picture.
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In the tradition of ‘stones that look like something else’...
The Eagle of Grange.
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The tomb interior, past the overlapping orthostats of the north-facing side.
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The southern section of the entrance kerb with the quartz boulder on the southwestern corner.
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The eastern side of the ditch, showing what may be some of the stone facing of the outer wall mentioned by Anthony Weir.
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Two quartz mini-boulders, in a diagonal from the foreground over the odd looking clump of grass to the middle line of the picture. While these may be dumped from the field, there isn’t a huge amount of debris thrown in here and they are both in and around the pit gouged out of the centre.
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A view northeast over the presumed axial stone and through the portals. rjck, while deeply involved with the survey here, still found time to step into the one wet cowshit in the field before we left.
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The horizon on the axial line southwest, showing a gap in the mountains which could have been the focus. Its difficult to be sure because of the ruined condition of the portals and axial stone.
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A view southwest through what is most probably the portals, one standing and one fallen, over what would then be the prostrate axial stone.
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Glantane, no longer ‘for sale’, sits in its saucer on the edge of the world.
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Looking at the horizon to the southwest along the axis, if the missing stone was to the northeast, or the left foreground.
Sorry about the picture clarity. It’s been a dull day.
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From the field that brought you cows.
A basic site plan altered to show an arc of possible positions for the fourth stone, which would probably have been located at the east of the conjectured circle. A position here would keep all stones with their long axes parallel to, and paired on either side of, a line running northeast to southwest.
Image credit: Modified by gjrk from Burl (BAR 195 1988) and O'Nuallain (JRSAI 114 1984)
Gortnacowly, referred to evocatively in the 1899 trace for the 1902 O.S. Name Book, as “four standing stones of druidical antiquity”.
I’ve altered the plan to show an arc of possible positions for the absent stone which would probably have been located on the eastern side south of an axis line running northeast to southwest.
Image credit: Modified by gjrk from Burl (BAR 195 1988) and O'Nuallain (JRSAI 114 1984)
I’ve been debating with myself for a long time about whether or not to include this site. These aren’t even really field notes, since they’re being written in my living-room, months after my last visit there. If an Englishman’s home is his castle, does that make an Irishman’s sitting-room his field?
Burl, sounding almost bitter in his guide entry, gives it a special category, namely ‘unseeable’, and discourages any visit not involved with official clearance. Ruggles in his orientation tables at the rear of ‘Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland’ (1999; 217), mentions the immovable vegetation that made accurate survey impossible. The monument is almost drowned in a wash of turbulent growth. Yet it has not always been this way.
I have posted Somerville’s plan from the beginning of the 20th century. A print of Webster’s sketch of 1930 hangs on my wall, the circle open and clear. As long as I have been interested in the past, this site has fascinated, or rather, obsessed me.
It sits on a slight rise at the north side of a tidy little field. Carrigfadda looms to the west. The ground is open to the south and on a sunny day you can almost feed on the glow and brightness in the air. Rabbits make surprised darts across in front of you and the only sounds are earfuls and earfuls of natural life.
A quick glance at O’Nuallain’s 1984 plan will give you an idea of the shape of the monument: partially used as a fence on the western side, it is 8.5 metres in diameter, reckoned to have contained 19 stones up to 1.1 metres high, with a 70cm high and 1.4 metre wide axial stone.
The plans diverge over two facts. O’Nuallain shows the detached radial portals, strangely missed by Somerville. On the other hand the one foot high centre stone shown and described by Somerville and Webster was either missing or concealed when O’Nuallain’s survey took place.
I have poked through here myself at winter time when things die back a bit and experienced a kind of euphoria as portals and circle stones are revealed. It must be tied with its being hidden, yet being there, its sparkling location, the character and perfect size of its pillars, my immersion in its history and forbidden reputation and perhaps a multitude of other things. It’s difficult to exactly put a finger on why it should but I know that this place affects me more than any other.
Access is over a gate with some dire warnings about unauthorised entry, but the farm is just down the road to the south if you want to give it a go and ask.
The arrow points to the location of the circle, just in from the edge of that section of undergrowth.
Image credit: gjrk
Drawn from O’Nuallain PRIA 84 C (1984).
Image credit: After Sean O'Nuallain
Modified slightly from E.M. Fahy JCHAS 1959.
Declination figure taken from Clive Ruggles’ ‘Astronomy In Prehistoric Britain and Ireland’ 1999.
All five pits were found sealed under a gravel pavement. The fallen stone was re-erected after excavation and marker pillars placed in the two empty sockets. Slabs were positioned over the locations of the human remains.
Image credit: After E.M Fahy
All pictures were taken in October 2004. This is the axial taken from a couple of metres in front of the circle.
Image credit: gjrk